Tagged: troy trojans

Before last week’s news broke, Arkansas’ odds of winning the national championship this year were 15-to-1, good for eighth best odds in the country. One might think that losing a coach who was an insanely good 60-38-3 against the spread in his career (29-19-3 at Arkansas) would hurt Arkansas’ chances. However, oddsmakers announced this week that Arkansas would remain at 15-to-1.

Chance Cleveland’s career-high 12 strikeouts against Troy helped him pick up a weekend victory for UALR. It landed Cleveland ahead of all Sun Belt Conference pitchers in strikeouts for the season. And it netted him the Sun Belt Conference Pitcher of the Week award.

The UALR men’s basketball team outscored Troy 18-6 in overtime to earn a 74-62 victory in the final game at Sartain Hall on Saturday night. UALR hit nine three pointers in the win and moved one step closer to locking up its fifth Sun Belt Conference Division championship in nine years under head coach Steve Shields.

While the Red Wolves’ offense took a while to get rolling, the opportunistic defense took control of the game with a 60-yard fumble return for a score by Darryl Feemster and a blocked punt recovery by Don Jones to stake ASU to a 17-0 lead. Troy never was closer than 10 points the rest of the way, as the ASU offense found a good mix of Ryan Aplin’s scrambles and his pin-point accuracy on sideline routes to gain 283 yards in the second half while the defense clamped down on Troy, allowing just 98 total yards in the second half. Aplin connected on 25 of 37 passes for 356 yards and three touchdowns. Senior receiver Dwayne Frampton had 10 catches for 153 yards and a score, breaking the ASU record for career receptions. Besides a 30-yard scoring strike to Frampton, Aplin passed for a 10-yard touchdown to Taylor Stockemer and a 9-yard shovel pass to Rod Hall.

An opportunistic Arkansas State defense staked the Red Wolves to a 17-0 lead, and junior quarterback Ryan Aplin and the ASU offense then put the game in cruise control with Aplin's running and passing in a 45-14 win over Troy on Saturday at ASU Stadium.

Arkansas State plays its final game of 2011 with a wish that it can enter the GoDaddy.com Bowl in January with sole possession of the Sun Belt title. Central Arkansas hopes that it can play another game in December with a win against this week's FCS playoff opponent, Montana.

Arkansas State has a share of the Sun Belt Conference title already. Lose Saturday’s game against Troy and the Red Wolves still get to claim part of a league championship. Not that they’re in the mood to share.

The Sun Belt Conference announced Monday that Arkansas State's home football game against Troy on Dec. 3 has been selected to be televised by the Sun Belt Network as its game of the week. ?The game was originally scheduled for 2 p.m., but will now kickoff at 3:30 p.m. to accommodate the television broadcast.

Linebacker Mark Wilson became commitment No. 20 for Arkansas. Wilson, who plays for Fullerton (Calif.) Community College, is originally from Tallahassee, Fla. He committed to Illinois out of high school and at one time signed with Troy.

Our roundtable guys take on a variety of subjects this week, most of them near and dear to Razorback fans' hearts: the upcoming Alabama game on Saturday, Tyler Wilson's performance, the areas of concern that arose on defense last week against Troy. Join in on the discussion in our comments section with the likes of Bruce James, Justin Acri, T.J. Carpenter and our staff.

For three weeks Arkansas has been sleepwalking through its schedule under the pretense the team is working on fundamentals. I suppose that is partially true. But in the second half against Troy, the Razorbacks finally dropped the rouse. Their boredom caught up with them. When the Razorbacks take the field against the Crimson Tide on Saturday it will have been exactly 364 days since a 24-20 loss and a late-game collapse doomed them to a less-than-perfect season. It will have been exactly one year to the day since the Razorbacks and Bobby Petrino circled this game on their calendar. Does anyone honestly want to argue the Razorbacks weren’t the least bit distracted against Troy?

Too busy enjoying the weekend to, you know, read about No. 14 Arkansas' 38-28 victory against Troy? Below is a list of what you missed in Razorback coverage and above is a slideshow you can watch (to keep from reading):

WHAT WE LEARNED: Work remains. Not so much to hit the panic button and planning New Year’s in Dallas, but enough to have us wondering if Arkansas is ready for a huge leap in competition against No. 2 Alabama. Even if nobody expected the Razorbacks to be tested, it was probably a good thing they were before facing the Crimson Tide. As Twitter follower @jimr3105 put it: “it was like a Straight A kid getting a D. #Wakeupcall.”

Playing two games against the worst teams you could schedule, and then jumping out to a 21-0 lead on your first three possessions against a reasonbly talented mid-major leads to the kind of second half Arkansas had in holding off the Sun Belt Conference's Troy Trojans 38-28 Saturday night.

We're blogging live throughout Arkansas' nonconference matchup with Troy at Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Fayeteville. Come in and join us for all the happenings as Arkansas, a 24-point favorite, looks to improve to 3-0 on the season. Troy is 0-1 after an opening week loss to Clemson.

Teams don't show all they've got in tune-up games. Most folks who pay attention to college football would agree that’s the case. Doesn’t mean Coach Bobby Petrino wants to talk about it. In fact, Petrino did his best to shoot that idea down — with humor! — Thursday when a local TV personality asked about further opening up the playbook in the coming weeks.

Last week’s picks proved to be so spectacular I only regretted that I have but one fantasy bank account to bet on college football games. Last week’s picks notched a 7-0-1 record, which means we won enough that we can celebrate through the Razorbacks’ final tune-up game and recover in time for the beginning of the season next week.

By defensive coordinator Willy Robinson’s count the Razorbacks have missed seven opportunities for turnovers through two games. That includes defensive backs dropping potential interceptions or tipping the ball up instead of coming down with it. Robinson further estimated two of those could have resulted in touchdowns.